Journal Social Media Editors (JSMEs)

The Journal Social Media Editors are a team of active microbiology researchers working to keep our community up to date about the latest articles and collections from the FEMS Journals. The JSME team also organize around awareness days and we help them to share their science communications work. You can find their social media posts on the following accounts:

Twitter: @FEMSmicro
Facebook: @FEMSmicro
LinkedIn: Federation of European Microbiological Societies
microLife journal Twitter account: @microLifeJrnl
FEMS Microbes journal Twitter account: @FEMSMicrobes

Project Manager

Joseph Brooks Shuttleworth

Short bio: Joseph is the Science Communications Officer at FEMS, where he leads on the digital media and marketing, internal and external communications, FEMS webinars, and the social media side of things. His time is spent managing various communications systems, projects, and volunteer teams with a SciComms focus.

Previous to FEMS, he worked in science communications in London at the Science Media Centre UK, and spent time as political factchecker for Full Fact, the UK’s independent fact checking charity. His academic background is in Natural Sciences (M.A. University of Cambridge) and the History and Philosophy of Science (M.Sc. University College London), with a focus on the Philosophy of Computing. Originally from Oxford (UK), as a school student student he spent 3 summers interning at the William Dunn School of Pathology, where he cultivated copious E. coli colonies and a love for microbiology.

Get in touch with him at joseph.shuttleworth “at” fems-microbiology.org

JSME Volunteers

Fortunato Palma Esposito

Journal: FEMS Microbiology Ecology

Short bio: Fortunato Palma Esposito is a biotechnologist interested in the “Microbial World”, especially in the sustainable exploitation of marine microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi and microalgae to identify and develop novel natural products. He completed his PhD at NRC of Naples, then he moved to a consultancy company working in the framework of EU funding programmes, and currently he is a Postdoc Researcher at Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn of Naples.

Jakob Jung

Journal: FEMS Microbiology Letters

Short bio: Jakob Jung completed his MSc in cellular biotechnology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Now he pursues a PhD at the Institute for Molecular Infection Biology (IMIB) in Würzburg, Germany. In his current research, Jakob tries to decipher the target, and off-target, effects of species-specific antibiotics using computational and next-generation sequencing approaches.

Zehra Esra Ilhan

Journal: FEMS Microbiology Reviews

Short bio: Esra is currently a postdoctoral researcher at INRAE, France and she completed her Ph.D. in Microbiology at Arizona State University. She has a background in environmental microbiology and roles of microbiome in female health and metabolic diseases. Her current research focuses on bi-directional interactions between microbiomes and pharmaceuticals in the context of human health.

Sumitra Debina Mitra

Journal: Pathogens and Disease

Short bio: Sumitra completed her PhD in microbiology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and went on to do a postdoctoral research fellowship at Northwestern University, Chicago. Her research focus has been on bacterial virulence factors, most recently on the type 3 secretion system of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. She recently moved to the Netherlands and is currently enjoying learning Dutch.

Snigdha Tiwari

Journal: FEMS Yeast Research

Short bio: Snigdha holds a Bachelor’s degree in Microbiology from Goa University and a Master’s in Microbiology from Savitribai Phule Pune University. She is now pursuing a PhD in Biotechnology at Agharkar Research Institute Pune, India; where she took an interest in yeast taxonomy and systematics. She is studying yeast communities associated with the gut of insects (Isoptera) and floral nectars. The aim of her current research is to assess the biotechnological potential of yeasts isolated from such niches, focusing on the production of ethanol, xylitol, and value-added enzymes.

Elisa Venturini

Journal: microLife

Twitter account: @microLifeJrnl

Short bio: Elisa comes from Italy, where she studied Biotechnology for her Bachelor’s degree. She then moved to the University of Würzburg, Germany, for her Master’s, working on the investigation of Salmonella small proteins at the Institute for Molecular Infection Biology. She is currently pursuing her PhD in the same laboratory, focusing on the annotation and functional characterization of new small proteins involved in virulence.

Maša Zupančič

Journal: FEMS Microbes

Twitter account: @FEMSMicrobes

Short bio: Maša Zupančič obtained her BSc in Biology and continued with MSc in Ecotehnologies due to her interest in environmental studies. After a year of working in the field of plant molecular genetics at Agricultural Institute of Slovenia, she left the world of plants and entered the world of microbes. Currently she is doing her PhD at National Institute of Biology, studying toxic cyanobacterial communities in surface waters.